Q & BA Questions thread

[jonb]

a question for Q&BA - and my first post so i hope it ends up where intended !

if the aim of the Ulysses misssion is to collect data from above the polar regions of the sun,why is it placed in an orbit that spends so little time in those regions and sends it to cold places where it risks power failures ? is there some special problem in putting instruments into orbit in a plane at right angles to the plane of the earth around the sun ?

if the great Phil is unable to put this into his reply slot, is anyone esle able to offer a reason ?

thanks for all the fish

John from Kent, UK

[gGriffeth]

Originally Posted by Sticks

Change of pace here, although I suspect it may have been covered in astronomycast so we are after your take on this one.

How do you get started in astronomy, what kind of equipment should you start out with, what is the best way to use a scope, (especially if you wear glasses do you look through the eyepiece with your glasses on or try and focus the eyepiece to your prescription)

And finally how can the dedicated ameteur contribute any discoveries to the main bodies of science.

forgot to add

Graeme Stickings - Newcastle upon Tyne, England

I think that this is a perfect question....just to get it out of the way. I think you should do this in the beginning, since it's only going to be episode 3.

[shanek]

This I think would make for a very interesting one:

How large and how old is the universe, and how do we know?

[Damien Evans]

Originally Posted by Charlie in Dayton

I'm going to steal a tad of the BA's thunder too...
1 -- the easiest galaxy to see at all is the Milky Way, because we're inside it. It's visible to the naked eye on a dark night as a band of stars running from Sagittarius up across the sky to Canis Major on the other side, according to my northern hemisphere star wheel (the MW continues on past these constellations, but is below the horizon then).
The easiest galaxy to see other than ours is M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. It is approximately 2.7 million light years away (ballpark math -- 186,000 miles per second X 60 seconds X 60 minutes X 24 hours X 365 days x 2,700,000 = miles), and is the furthest object visible to the naked eye. It is visible to the naked eye on a dark nite from a dark site, and easily visible even in small binoculars (the ubiquitous 7x35's).

2 -- in a few odd billion years or so, if I have the figures correct, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way will "collide" and rearrange each other. At this stage, no one's sure if the end will be two new galaxies, or one. See below for additional on this.

3 -- a galaxy consists mostly of empty space, so there are few if any actual planetary/star collisions. Other than that, there are hundreds upon thousands of stars (and there's no doubt that some of those stars have their own planets), and large clouds of dust and gas. There is a lot of change in orbits due to gravitational interactions, but there's not expected to be anything(s) running into each other.

Hope this helps, and an in-advance 'sorry about that, chief' to the BA if i'm in error somewhere or a toe got stepped on.

slight correction, the easiest galaxy to see other than our own is the LMC, which is easily a naked eye object in the southern hemisphere

[bird2brain]

OK, so I went out on Feb 19 to look at the beautiful Moon and Venus. At 5:30 (San Jose Local time) my friend was first to spot the moon, but the sky was still a bit bright to spot Venus. Again, she spotted a small dot near the moon (her eyes are younger than mine) but it was not where I expected venus to be. Instead of three finger down and to the left, it was oen finger down and to the right. Huh. In the few minutes we watched, it seemed to move a bit, way faster than I expected to see things change wetween the moon and planet.

We moved my car the the roof of the parking structure so I could break out the binocs and look again, but the bright spot was not where we left if a few minutes ago. The next bright spot we saw (this is about ive minutes later) was ABOVE AND TO THE LEFT OF THE MOON! (Three fingers!) I thought to myself, "Self, this can't be right" Pretty soon, it was a full fist, then a fist and a thumb. In the space of the 1/2 hour I watched, it must have moved 45 degrees across the sky. I was forced to leave and lost track of it, but this seemed too fast for a planet and waaayy too slow for a plane or satellite (unless it was near geosync).

What was it?!!!

[bird2brain]

BTW, it WASN'T Venus. She showed right on time and right in place and stayed put just as expected. The mystery object started out brighter and faded compared to Venus, but not like a satellite which comes and goes in a few minutes. I couldn't find anything about it on Heavens-Above, either.

[Sticks]

I still think that BA doing a piece about how to start in astronomy and showing what kind of kit an ameteur should start with, and where they should report any new sitings to would be interesting, but what do I know.

[Funkmon]

I know you covered the Mayan calendar doomsday thing in the SETI show, but it's stuck in there with a bunch of other stuff, and an explanation of how the Mayan calendar works is in order, too. All you say is that it's made up of cycles. It would be swell if we knew a bit more about not only the doomsday prediction, and what will supposedly happen, but some of the intricacies and why it won't happen.

Thanks,
Tim Fletcher.

[Mason Dixon]

Here's my question:

How much of the sky has Hubble's color cameras photographed? And how do the new crop of mega telescopes compare with Hubble's resolution? Will the pictures be as good?

John Hart
Huntsville, Alabama

[Muero]

The recent post about the IC 342 galaxy (absolutely gorgeous by the way) got me wondering about the bright spot at the center of galaxies. Then I saw M104, which shows its bright center to be a bulge in all three dimensions, going outside the plane of the rest of the circular galaxy. I was thinking it could be just a higher concentration of stars that are too far away to make out individually. But I really don't know. So, what's at the center of these galaxies, and what makes the bulge?

[ioresult]

BA said here ( http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2...#comment-96235 ): "But I also worked very hard on trying to extract an object’s spectrum from its parent star’s spectrum, and we spent weeks on it, and eventually gave up. It was impossible due to scattered light. That was heartbreaking."

Ok maybe it's a little (very) specific, but what is scattered light, and why does it make it hard to get a good spectrum?

Thank you.

[Charlie in Dayton]

Here's a "What if...?"

Earth's North Pole is tilted away from the Sun at perihelion (close solar approach), allowing the mostly-water Southern Hemisphere to be heated by the sun 'more efficiently' due to distance.

Earth's North Pole is tilted toward the sun at aphelion (distant solar approach), allowing the mostly-land Northern Hemisphere to be heated more gently.

This arrangement allows for agriculture without roasting the crops in the ground, and the 'recharging' of Earth's 'thermal battery', so to speak.

What might the scenario be if this tilting were reversed? If the North Pole would be toward the Sun at perihelion, would we have anything resembling an agricultural phase in our past? Would we have 'evolved' from hunter-gatherers to communal agrarian societies?

And what would the effects on our global weather be, if the oceans were not warmed as they are on a regular basis with the current intensity of heat energy?

The tilts at perihelion/aphelion have greater significance to our development as a species and a civilization than most people realize (IMNSHO)...

[Neverfly]

Originally Posted by rwedens

I have a question. I have heard some answers to it but I still do not fully understand, so some help would be appreciated. The question: When we look at a galaxy and determine it is, let's say 10 billion light years away, that means the light left that galaxy 10 billion years ago and has taken that long to get to us. If the Big Bang happened (using round numbers) 14 billion years ago, how did a galaxy get 10 billion light years away from us in only 4 billion years? I know it has to do with the expansion phase and the fact that space itself is expanding, not just objects in space, but it still does not make good sense to me. How long was the rapid expansion phase? How far did the early universe expand during that time? And how fast is space expanding now? Thanks in advance for the help. Love your web site and thanks for turning me on to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. That is a great pod cast.

Richard.

I have wondered this a lot too. Unless a question gets bumped to priority in my mind- i forget to ask though. Id like to see this one answered too

[Whirlpool]

Originally Posted by The Bad Astronomer

This thread is for questions BABlog readers have for me for the "Q & BA" feature on the Bad Astronomy Blog. If you have a question, post it here along with your name and region if you want me to use them (otherwise I'll use your BAUT handle).

Try to be succinct! I'll be reading the question on the video, and I might have to paraphrase.

Enjoy, and thanks!


Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer

Hi Phil.

After seeing some pictures of Apollo and their missions given to me by a friend, I was just wondering , why are they dumping water in space ? Are these used water, or their excess fuel?

[EvilEye]

What happens to a photon when it is absorbed or utilized? Or... how is the enerergy converted from somthing so minute to something so useful?

Another way of asking this questin I have asked elsewhere on the board....

When we take photons into our eyes and convert them into coherent images, where do they go? The energy from them must still exist, no?

Or... to make it more complicated... are our thoughts actual or percieved real energy?

[sruggiero]

Hello,

I am a Biology teacher posting here for the first time. My physics teacher friend directed me here for info so I thought I would try this.
I recently received an e-mail from a former student concerning the following site and animation:

http://digg.com/videos/educational/C...rowing_AMAZING

It concerns plate tectonics and continental drift. Is there any credence to this hypothesis? Sorry if I am geologically challenged and/or naive.

Thanks,
S. Ruggiero
Sacramento, CA

[01101001]

Originally Posted by sruggiero

http://digg.com/videos/educational/C...rowing_AMAZING

Just in case the teacher can't wait for the BA to maybe answer this in Q&BA, this forum has a long topic on the subject of Neal Adam's Expanding Earth Model

[suitti]

A recent gamma ray burst article credits The Bad Astronomer for image captions!
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...challenge.html

It seems that every month or so a new article on GRBs seems to turn what we know
of them on their head. What is known for certain about GRBs? Is it just "stuff happens?".

[suitti]

I seem to have lost an hour of sleep. Any idea how i might be able to find it again?

I looked under the sofa...

[Charlie in Dayton]

Anyone happen to notice the changing tchotchkes in the background during the BA's video Q&BA's? Nice touch, Mr De Mille...

Spoiler Alert!!!
Left mouse over below to read a list of the 'special items' in the background so far...
Episode 1, Galaxies -- a copy of Bad Astronomy

Don't see a video of Episode 2...

Episode 3, The Farthest Star -- can't quite make it out...possibly a box for a model spacecraft from Space:1999?

Episode 4, The Gravity of the Situation -- the famed "The BA being the ruler of all he surveys" Skepchick calendar photograph

Episode 5, Spin Doctor -- something titled "Full Moon" (puzzle box, calendar...can't quite tell)

Episode 6, I Am Your Density-- concerns vacuum...and there's a vacuum cleaner sitting in the background...

[Zuke]

Man I love this Videocast! Thanks Dr. Phil.

Question about the latest episode: If the earth's atmosphere is denser ("particular"-ly speaking...hrmph) than the star forming regions in space...why didn't the earth, or any other hard object in our solar system, continue to clump up with other matter during the sun's forming period? Why didn't Jupiter continue to accumulate matter?

I guess I'm confused why the matter isn't continuing to contract into denser particles. Does it have something to do with strong and weak nuclear forces? Is it just that those star factories are so immense that, over a few million years or so, they will *eventually* form stars?

Obviously, I'm not an astronomer, so I hope the question makes sense to the professionals.

Thanks!

[Grand_Lunar]

Got another question;

What is the current prevailing hypothesis for how the universe will end?